1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to communication networks, and specifically, to a communication billing system that provides interrelated processing of wireless service events and wireline service events to produce a customer bill.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The development of advanced communication networks has taken on critical importance with the dramatic rise in consumer demand for additional services. Examples of these services include high quality voice, data, and video communications. These services are provided over both wireless and wired mediums and may be provided across one or multiple networks. For billing purposes, each service includes an individual communication billing system associated with the service to process service events and generate total charge records that represents a total billing charge for the respective service. The service events are generated by the system providing the individual service and represent an individual usage of the service. The total charge records from each billing system are provided to a total integration system that integrates the total charge records for each service subscribed to by a customer onto a single customer bill.
FIG. 1 illustrates an example of a communication billing system for a customer subscribing to a wireline service and a wireless service. On FIG. 1, wireline service events 113 are generated by the wireline system 111 for each individual usage of the wireline service during the course of a billing period. The wireline service events 113 are provided to a wireline billing system 101 by the wireline system 111. The wireline service events 113 are received in a wireline interface 104 and stored in a wireline processor 103 during the billing period. At the termination of the billing period, the wireline processor 103 totals all of the wireline service events 113, applies customer discounts, minimum service charges, taxes, and other promotional discounts or charges to generate a total charge record 115 for the wireline service. The wireline processor 103 provides total wireline charge record 115 to the total integration system 100.
Substantially concurrently, wireless service events 114 are generated by the wireless system 112 for each individual usage of the wireless service during the course of the billing period. The wireless service events 114 are provided to a wireless billing system 102 by the wireless system 112. The wireless service events 114 are received in a wireless interface 106 and stored in a wireless processor 105 during the billing period. At the termination of the billing period, the wireless processor 105 totals all of the wireless service events 114, applies customer discounts, minimum service charges, taxes, and other promotional discounts or charges to generate a total wireless charge record 116 for the wireless service. The wireless processor 105 provides the total wireless charge record 116 to the total integration system 100.
The total integration system 100 integrates the total wireline charge record 115 and the total wireless charge record 116 onto a single customer bill 107. Unfortunately, as new services are provided, additional billing systems are required to process service events generated by the new service. Therefore, a need exists in the art for a billing system that processes service events regardless of the source (wireless or wireline) at the event level to generate total charge records for each service that can be integrated onto the customer bill.